Yep. We're at it again . . .

Spiderman doesn't always wear a red, spidery outfit, didn't you know?  Sometimes, he wears good ol' jeans and a polo shirt that has seen better days . . . and he actually uses a ladder or two to get up high . . .

This is a shot of my bedroom today.  Lee has scraped off all the popcorn plaster that was part of the "builder special" finish that came with the house.  Now he's adding a thin layer of joint compound and re-taping all the edges . . . then sanding and smoothing things out so we can paint the ceiling . . .  I have the paint color all picked out:  It's called "Popcorn" by Behr.  Seriously.

Tea Bread Tuesday: Irish Soda Bread Redux

Tea Bread Tuesday is changing at my house.  I will no longer bake a new tea bread every Tuesday.  When even my husband, with his insatiable sweet tooth, stopped nibbling on the breads, I knew it was time to reassess the project.  Oh, I'll still try out new recipes now and again.  I just don't want to continue the search for a new recipe every week.  When I started the project, I really thought I'd have enough recipes to fill an entire year.  Well, it turns out that, although the recipes are certainly out there, I'm not interested in a great many of them.  If anything, all this baking has made me very pernickety about what I choose to bake.  So, I will continue to post a new quick bread recipe once in a while, but I'll intersperse my baking with the tried and true recipes that my family already loves.

This week I baked one of our favorites, Irish Soda Bread, which I posted here last year for St. Patrick's Day.  This year I tried a small variation:  I added the grated zest of one orange, borrowing a suggestion from Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa - it was delicious!  The orange zest compliments the currants beautifully, and adds a little more depth to the overall flavor.

Thanks to all my friends in blogland, who stuck it out all these months, and indulged me while I went through this tea bread phase.  I'm not completely done with it; I'm sure there're one or two recipes that I just have to try out . . . I'll be in touch . . .

I'm back! Sort of . . .

Twenty-one days of wallowing in my yearly winter depression that has me walking around in a fog, barely going through the motions.  I go to work, I do some things around the house (not many).  Somehow, enough laundry gets done to get by . . .  And yet, as I reflect on the last twenty-one days, a lot of stuff has happened . . . I know I was there . . . sort of . . . Here are some of them:

1. I ran out of Vitamin D . . .
2. I caught a cold, my first one in five years . . .
3. I was Confirmation sponsor for my niece Joyce . . .
4. My son, John, celebrated his 22nd birthday . . .
5. I finally ordered Vitamin D online . . .
6. I booked our family vacation to Cabo San Lucas . . .
7. I had a new diagnostic mammogram, and it shows that a lump I've had under my breast for the last two years, is gone . . .
8. Lee started a new remodeling project:  He's scraping the popcorn plaster off our bedroom ceiling and smoothing it out with joint compound, a necessary precursor to painting the room . . .
9. My Vitamin D arrived . . .
10. John is home on Spring Break . . .

Here are a couple of photos of Joyce's Confirmation.  She chose "Lillian," her grandmother's name, as her confirmation name - a touching gesture and a beautiful name . . . 

It upsets me so much, this wallowing.  So many good things are happening to me, and, all I want to do is sleep!  Today, I had a good day.  The temperature was in the 40s, and the sun came out . . . The cardinals are back and we've heard them in the morning by our bedroom window . . .  John is home, with his usual boundless enthusiasm, drawing us into his projects . . . I had the energy to cook and bake this weekend . . . I'm over the hump, I think, but I just ran out of Omega 3 capsules . . .